I give out a small unofficial award for some of my favorite original songs in English that are part of the Open Mic contest. How do I participate? * Make a valid entry to Open Mic. * Make sure the title makes it clear that the song is original and in English or an instrumental. * Be someone other than me. (Sorry Spanish musicians. You guys are great but I don't understand well enough to evaluate the songs.) Everyone I select gets these prizes: * A full upvote from me on their post. * 4 SBD transfer * One more full upvote if they comment on this post. Upvotes are ~30c this week because Steem does not go the direction I want it to, and also I delegated some SP to an initiative that needed a little temporary help. I'm setting the base prize pool at 20 SBD because you guys are amazing. As usual I'll be making sure this post doesn't become profitable and sending out a second round if I have to; I don't know how @pfunk finds time to keep upvoting me with all the other stuff he does but it's been great. You all should give him your witness vote. The quality of the Open Mic pool as a whole was stunning this week, and I had a really hard time figuring out how I wanted to do this. I ended up with eleven songs on my shortlist, and ended up splitting it into five winners and six honorable mentions. Every one of the honorable mentions could have won in previous weeks.

Winners in no particular order:

"We Worth It" by @andreabortone with @carlosvidal and her father
This is your first song in English and you're already amazing. I cannot overstate how impressive that is. I love the way you sing, and how you put your whole self into it.

"Be There" by @breakoutthecrazy
You could have split the vocals, made one post for each, and won twice. Love the way both of you sing, and it's even better together. Really amazing work.

"Fly" by @paintingangels
Oh, Serena. Why'd you do that? Put me through that? OK, I know why, cause you have to be excellent even when it hurts. This is the first Open Mic song that's brought me to tears, and I had zero doubts about making you the first to win in consecutive weeks.

"Pantam and Calabash Improvisation" by @nadabrahmasounds
Gorgeous music, with so many extra points for improvising on four instruments at once. Love what you're doing with the pantam, and your control over the instrument on your forearm is really impressive. I had to watch the video several times to figure out where the fourth instrument I was hearing was; that's almost stage magic. I'm looking forward to sharing this with my god-daughter, who is becoming a serious percussionist.

"Barroom Blues" by @dannyhamilton and Christopher Lopez
Great song, and I really love the way the asynchronous vocals work on the harmonies. It's obviously a good subject matter for natural async, and it really gives the feel of mildly-drunken camaraderie.

Honorable Mentions:

"Children of the Night" by @dinoromanelli. I really like the darker direction of this one. Maybe a style worth exploring further. "Heart Like a Wheel" by @carljohn. Lovely country song. Original piano song by @samidbarid. You keep really impressing me with your compositions. "Bacchanal" by @lillywilton. Love the second verse here especially. "Nothing Sacred (I'm Lost)" by @nahupuku. Another really impressive entry from a musician writing in English for the first time. Serious respect for the courage that takes. "Give Me Back My Mojo" by @gibber. I dig the energetic blues and the simplicity here.

Other news:

I'm starting a challenge for other people to do just what I'm doing here: create a nonprofit curation post featuring songs that you love from Open Mic and giving the post rewards to the performers. I'd really love it if we could get a whole bunch of these going. Basic details are in this post. I'm pledging a 100% upvote to help get your posts' growth started, and to make sure you get something out of it, I'll buy you a @steembasicincome share (worth 0.5 Steem) every week you participate. Feel free to take my format or create one of your own. Mention me in the post, or come to the SBI Discord where I have a channel just for this project, or hit me up on the Open Mic Discord or anywhere else you happen to see me. The tag for this project is #openmicsupport

Hey! Before you upvote this post!

**If you want to upvote because you liked the songs, go upvote *their* posts!** (If their posts have paid out, see if they've commented here and give them an upvote.) If you want to upvote this one *also* that's fine but please reward the songwriters first.